Separation of Congress from budgeting beyond a government wide yay/nay vote might help. As it stands, much like most of the military Nasa is a congressional district jobs program that occasionally outputs something useful more than an actual public service.
You get the output of what you incentivize, and Nasa’s funding incentivizes jobs in key districts no matter how much more efficient it would be to put all their buildings in the small town they own in Florida.
Separation of Congress from budgeting beyond a government wide yay/nay vote might help. As it stands, much like most of the military Nasa is a congressional district jobs program that occasionally outputs something useful more than an actual public service.
You get the output of what you incentivize, and Nasa’s funding incentivizes jobs in key districts no matter how much more efficient it would be to put all their buildings in the small town they own in Florida.
Unfortunately if that was the case then NASA simply wouldn’t get much funding at all.